Should I build cities or castles in my capital holding?

[XxSNIPER98]

Title. Also if I build castles can i assign them a vassal or is it better to keep that in my demesne?

for maximum money + levis

[Narrowmind]

How many holding slots does your capital county have? The more the better. Generally speaking, castles are best. Feudals aren't generally allowed to hold cities or temples without penalty. But you can put them under a vassal if you like. A castle holding uses one of your holdings the same way a county capital does. So you can have an entire province or a castle within it.

[gooooood mewing vietnam!]

personally, i don't see the point in building castles. cities give more cash money, cash money gives you more retinues and mercenaries, which replenish in battle and can have their composition controlled/chosen, unlike levies. i always crank obligations to maximum cashola as well.

[XxSNIPER98]

Originally posted by Ratlegion:

How many holding slots does your capital county have? The more the better. Generally speaking, castles are best. Feudals aren't generally allowed to hold cities or temples without penalty. But you can put them under a vassal if you like. A castle holding uses one of your holdings the same way a county capital does. So you can have an entire province or a castle within it.

i have a 7 holding capital. Can i assign a vassal to the castles? I want to keep my holdings in other provinces also i plan to move to egypt later in the game

[ste]

You can assign a vassal

[galadon3]

you can assign a vassal to a castle but honestly unless you want to keep additional castles in your capital yourself, cities are the better choice.

The two main strategies are:
-keep all your demesne limit concentrated in capital plus provinces in capital duchy with as many castles as possible
-keep your demesne in 2-3 duchies by having a castle per county and fill as many slots with cities as possible

the first strategy is for more levies the second for more money

[Langkard]

Originally posted by Rawhide:

personally, i don't see the point in building castles. cities give more cash money, cash money gives you more retinues and mercenaries, which replenish in battle and can have their composition controlled/chosen, unlike levies. i always crank obligations to maximum cashola as well.

Cash only lets you buy retinues up to the retinue cap (if your retinues cost money instead of prestige). Castles let you build upgrades to increase your retinue cap and upgrades to increase your tax revenue.

[Azunai]

you're going to hold castles up to your demesne cap anyway and you get the same +20 base retinue per level of training grounds regardless of whether the castle is the capital of another county or a secondary castle in your capital county.

secondary castles in the capital county give a little extra money since you'll usually have a traderoute there after the first ruler finished the business focus stuff and you'll usually have the steward collecting taxes in that county 24/7, so any additional castle also gets that local bonus.

but even with those bonuses you still get less money than if you used the demesne point for holding a whole new county with multiple new vassal cities paying directly to you.

so it boils down to more levies vs. more money. levies are more useful early game and then become somewhat redundant in the late game. but early bonuses usually outweigh late bonuses in such games, so there's nothing wrong with having a bunch of extra castles in the capital for early game. you can later hand them to vassal barons and use the freed up demesne points for additional counties later on when you feel that the extra money would help more thant the extra levies.

[Elder Borjoyzee]

I generally like more castles in the capital county because of the capital levy bonus, which can help lead to less revolts. But yeah when you start blobbing and especially if you have conclave with war councils that matters less. Agree that its better early game, cities later if you don't have the slots filled up.

[gooooood mewing vietnam!]

Originally posted by Langkard:

Originally posted by Rawhide:

personally, i don't see the point in building castles. cities give more cash money, cash money gives you more retinues and mercenaries, which replenish in battle and can have their composition controlled/chosen, unlike levies. i always crank obligations to maximum cashola as well.

Cash only lets you buy retinues up to the retinue cap (if your retinues cost money instead of prestige). Castles let you build upgrades to increase your retinue cap and upgrades to increase your tax revenue.

by the time you have the tech to max out taxes either way, you should have the tech to have pretty sizeable retinues to make up for it

[mr_bman]

Does you no good to have the ability to field a larger Army when you can't pay to keep them on the field of battle. Make cities so you can afford it. They pay you much more in taxes if you keep your vassals happy.
Give a mayor the Duchy he's inside of that particular Duchy and he'll turn it into a vassal merchant republic - make you lots of cash.

[Lemilys]

I like building castles and maxing out castle town, city walls, keep and training grounds. I usually ignore everything else or save other upgrades until last. (unless I need ships, then I will get those upgrades). I keep two duchies (or one big one) and fill them up with castles and hold them directly, starting from my capital. Usually about 9 or 10 castles depending on the duchies. I like this, it keeps me with a lot of troops and enough money to pay for them, and maxing out my retinue by upgrading the training grounds. This is what works for me.